


A time to break down and a time to build up

by dancinguniverse



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Gen, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4430594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/pseuds/dancinguniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Before," Nix says, yawning but correctly taking from Dick's upright pose that he's not welcoming sleep again immediately. "Back home. What kind of nightmares did you have?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A time to break down and a time to build up

**Author's Note:**

> In response to the prompt: nightmares. 
> 
> Can definitely be read as slash, but doesn't cross any lines. 
> 
> Title, of course, from Ecclesiastes.

In an attic in Hagenau, Dick jerks awake, disoriented, heart hammering from some terror he can't quite remember, body primed to fight or flight, before he recognizes Nix's shaggy head bent over his own, Nix's warm hands on his shoulders, Nix's voice, repeating his name, and he lets out a tense breath, slumping back against his borrowed pillow.

"What?" he asks, after he's taken another breath.

"You were dreaming," Nix answers, sitting back, hip bumping against Dick's through the blanket. It's dark in their small shared room, but the moonlight through the window is enough to see by, even if Nix's beard shadows his face more than usual.

Dick rubs a hand over his forehead, getting his bearings, and kicks Nix away a bit so he can sit up. "Not the word I'd choose," he says shortly. Nix shifts but doesn't leave the bed, and Dick doesn't think to mind. After months of close quarters and crammed transports, foxholes and shared rooms, it's hard sometimes to remember what personal space was like. Dick blows out a long breath and Nix watches him, and Dick realizes he has forgotten, too, what it is like not to be watched, constantly. By his men, mostly, by his superiors and his comrades. By contrast, Nix's careful and familiar study, that of a friend, is almost comforting.

Dick doesn't remember what he was dreaming about as more than a flash of adrenaline and emotion, and Nix doesn't ask. The broad strokes are obvious to both of them, having lived through the real version, and rehashing the details won't make the night more bearable. Instead, Nix lounges back on one elbow, sprawled across Dick's legs, and Dick allows it. The puppy pile all the soldiers indulge in, learned during long uncomfortable transports and in quarters where the only soft headrest was your buddy's shoulder or lap, isn't limited to the non-coms, but Dick tries to maintain a sense of decency when he's in front of the men. Here, in their darkened bedroom, Dick can acknowledge that human contact is one of the few comforts still available to them after months in the field, and that he and Nix crave it as badly as anyone else.

"Before," Nix says, yawning but correctly taking from Dick's upright pose that he's not welcoming sleep again immediately. "Back home. What kind of nightmares did you have?"

Dick blinks at the question, but considers his answer. In this area, too, they've covered far more personal ground than dreams, and Dick hesitates only out of a struggle to frame an answer. "Classes, I think," he says. "They weren't cheap, and I was always worrying about wasting all my time and money if I didn't make it through. I remember," and he smiles at the recollection, "dreaming that I'd received a reminder about a final in a course I had signed up for and then forgotten about. Never attended. It felt so dire." Nix chuckles with him. "How about you?"

Nix scratches at his beard. "I used to be scared of fires. Had dreams all the time as a kid that we'd all burn up. For a while I wouldn't sleep in my room. I'd sneak back downstairs, drag a blanket behind the couch where my parents wouldn't see me. I was scared I'd be trapped upstairs, wouldn't be able to get out if a fire started." Dick considers him, and Nix shrugs. "Well the factory and practically the whole town exploded when I was five, so I probably had a reason. Not that I remember it. Our house was fine. Still, I guess I heard enough about it that it made an impression."

"Nix..." Dick stares at him, thoroughly distracted from his original nightmare. "That's terrible."

"Oh, sure. Twenty people died. You know, my father's probably killed more people than I have?" He laughs, though Dick doesn't join him.

"What happened?"

"I don't remember. The devil's in the details. The important thing," Nix taps Dick's knee, "is that it wasn't our fault, of course." He raises his eyebrows at Dick. "They rebuilt the factory. You can rebuild anything."

 _Not twenty people_ , Dick thinks, and also, ' _our fault?' You were five_. He looks toward their shuttered window, imagining the ruins of the city beyond the walls of one of the few intact houses the officers have secured for themselves. "I'm not so sure about that," he says aloud.

"They've done it once already just this century, Dick," Nix says, following his gaze along with his train of thought. "And plenty more times before that." His voice breaks over another yawn as he drifts farther down among the blankets, settling lower. "People are good at rebuilding."

Dick would like to believe him. They'd none of them escaped Bastogne intact, whether it was his men under fire or he and Nix, forced to huddle a hundred yards farther back and listen, and tell them only to hold on. He sees the toll it took on the men, all of them grown sharper, more brittle, honed down to almost nothing but still soldiering on. He sees it in Nix, whose avoidance of Battalion is becoming harder to ignore, the gaunt sag of his cheeks not quite hidden under the beard he's given up on keeping at bay. Dick himself has a slow simmer of rage he can't put out, that in thanks for their weeks of hell, they've only been sent to do more, fight harder, push on. He can see it wearing away at all of them, slower since they escaped the Ardennes, but there is so much less left to chip away at now. He'd like to believe they can rebuild, but he's far from sure they're done breaking.

"War's not over yet," Dick points out, but Nix doesn't reply, his breathing gone slow and deep, and Dick wonders if he's fallen asleep, sprawled across Dick's knees. "Hey." He squeezes Nix's calf, hanging off the bed within arm's reach. "You're gonna wreck your back like that." Nix grumbles at him unintelligibly.

For a moment, Dick thinks he might stay there, curled around Dick's legs and trapping him in place, forehead pressed into Dick's thigh, fingers curled against his hip, and Dick teeters between annoyance and affection. Then Nix rouses himself with a groan, clambering out of bed. He presses a hand to Dick's shoulder as he leaves, trailing it down his arm to squeeze briefly at Dick's fingers before he shuffles to his own bed across the room, collapsing into it with a creak of the bedframe. "Night, Dick," he mumbles.

Dick listens to Nix's breathing even out again before he drifts off to sleep himself. 


End file.
